Because of the way unholy blight refreshes diseases, your dots will automatically tic for the highest possible amounts after your trinkets and fallen crusader procs.

I have found that dots tic for 2-3k more on your opening sequence this way.

I have also found an annoyance with frost in general - Although blood plague will continue to tic for the highest amount possible for the full 30 seconds (even after your procs drop off), as soon as your procs drop off and you get a freezing fog proc and you use howling blast, your frost fever reverts to the lower "buff snapshot" damage again.

Anyway, has anyone found a higher dps opening sequence, or have any thoughts on this? If so, please share the info

You rarely see it on guides because it really doesn't make much of a difference. It's just how DK diseases have always worked.

If you have to run to the boss, you shouldn't use pillar before you outbreak. It's better to just get the outbreak while running to the boss and using pillar when you're actually in melee range. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using Unholy Blight as your disease opener if you can start in melee range and don't need it for an add phase or something later. If that's the case then yes, you're right, it's theoretically a very minor dps gain.

Basically, as you mentioned, you are constantly going to overwrite your Frost Fever because of Freezing Fog anyway, so all you're really doing is buffing your blood plague damage which is negligible compared to getting diseases up before you get to the boss and utilizing pillar in melee range. Either way it's not game breaking.

So basically your opener should be:

1. Army
2. Prepot
3. Outbreak
4. Ghoul (just pop it while running to the boss if you aren't in melee) / Pillar (only in melee range)

Diseases don't have dynamic damage increase.
Each time you apply your diseases, it calculates it then and there.

Open with Unholy Blight, it gives you a 10 second window to get a RotfC and/or trinket proc in addition to your pre-pot and Pillar of Frost.

However, its much harder for Frost to manage the subsequent diseases then it is for Unholy.
Howling Blast re-applies Frost Fever, it doesn't refresh it or extend it, so each time you Howling Blast, you get a new damage formula for Frost Fever.
While Festering Strike just extends current diseases, it keeps the same formula until they fall off or refreshed.

Leaves me with questions aswell;
- Is it a dps increase to delay Howling Blast on single target after you have buffed (pots/trinket/procs/pillar) Frost Fever up?
- Is it better to refreshing Blood Plague during Procs pre-emptively for increased disease damage or letting Plague Strike last as long as possible so you can have more Unholy Runes for Obliterates?

Its much easier for Unholy to just extend my buffed diseases until the next Outbreak so i can line up a nice set of buffs and procs to refersh it from one series of buffed diseases to the next.

Not as 2H frost, using PL will result in a clunky rotation unless you keep a spare rime/PS/outbreak for reapplying diseases (which could be a dps loss depends on rng and waiting time).
PL is awesome for DW tho'.

Not as 2H frost, using PL will result in a clunky rotation unless you keep a spare rime/PS/outbreak for reapplying diseases (which could be a dps loss depends on rng and waiting time).
PL is awesome for DW tho'.

Okay, that I actually didn't know, thanks! I've played DW frost pretty much exclusively since 2009, so.. well, you can see that my scope is pretty narrow, lol.

- Is it a dps increase to delay Howling Blast on single target after you have buffed (pots/trinket/procs/pillar) Frost Fever up?
- Is it better to refreshing Blood Plague during Procs pre-emptively for increased disease damage or letting Plague Strike last as long as possible so you can have more Unholy Runes for Obliterates?

The answer to both is just ignore your disease strength. It's not worth delaying HB and it's not worth re-applying blood plague. Diseases just don't do enough damage for it to matter.

Originally Posted by Inambour

Not as 2H frost, using PL will result in a clunky rotation unless you keep a spare rime/PS/outbreak for reapplying diseases (which could be a dps loss depends on rng and waiting time).
PL is awesome for DW tho'.

PL is still a minor DPS increase as 2H frost. Most people just don't run with it because it's incredibly inconvenient for the amount of benefit it provides. I don't see how it could result in a DPS loss unless played very poorly considering you don't have to use it perfectly for it to be a DPS increase over UB.

Because it's clunky and penalize OB spam at some point during the fight.
HB does "shitty" dmg as 2H frost, wasting a rune and another global CD on it is simply not welcome at all if u can avoid it. 2 GCD vs none (or one depends on situation) for UB, you do the math.
I don't see how it's a dps increase used poorly considering my above two points, enlighten me .

Does the Ghoul "SnapShot" stats, is it worth it to save him for the biggest buff during the opener or?

Player summoned Guardians (such as the DKs' Ghoul or a Priest's Shadowfiend) no longer snapshot stats and update dynamically. To get the maximum benefit out of it and your PoF, always pop it prior to PoF. That way not only will you not have to 'waste' a GCD on Raise Dead during PoF, but doing it 2-3 seconds in advance will give the Ghoul enough time to crawl out of the ground and start DPSing.

As such, my opener goes along the lines of:

1. Army at ~5 seconds left of pull timer
2. Raise Dead straight after
3. Prepot just before pull
4. Outbreak while running in
5. Pop Pillar once the GCD from Outbreak is up and I'm ready to Obliterate

For unholy snap-shotting your diseases when your buffs are active is a huge dps increase vs the usual outbreak with prepot only. You are talking about near 100% increase.

Here is what I do as unholy.

- Pre-pot
- Unholy Blight
- trinket procs (relic and le shin's orders)
- Weapon enchant proc
- Orc Racial with gargoyle
- Unholy blight finishes casting (at this point my diseases are up with the most potential damage, and are kept up through out the entire fight, or as long as boss mechanics allow it)
- DPS Rotation

Having both my trinks with 45 ICDs allows for easy re-application if the diseases fall off due to boss mechanics. All you need to help you out is some addon which keeps tracks of trinket internal cool-downs. As far as weapon enchant, it procs often, so it is possible to get all three into another snapshot in case you have to reapply them later on.

Player summoned Guardians (such as the DKs' Ghoul or a Priest's Shadowfiend) no longer snapshot stats and update dynamically. To get the maximum benefit out of it and your PoF, always pop it prior to PoF. That way not only will you not have to 'waste' a GCD on Raise Dead during PoF, but doing it 2-3 seconds in advance will give the Ghoul enough time to crawl out of the ground and start DPSing.

As such, my opener goes along the lines of:

1. Army at ~5 seconds left of pull timer
2. Raise Dead straight after
3. Prepot just before pull
4. Outbreak while running in
5. Pop Pillar once the GCD from Outbreak is up and I'm ready to Obliterate

Thanks, I wasn't sure if the pet was considered a "guardian", this clears things up for me on importance. The Garg is also a Guardian I imagine?

---------- Post added 2012-12-25 at 10:13 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Laroux

For unholy snap-shotting your diseases when your buffs are active is a huge dps increase vs the usual outbreak with prepot only. You are talking about near 100% increase.

Here is what I do as unholy.

- Pre-pot
- Unholy Blight
- trinket procs (relic and le shin's orders)
- Weapon enchant proc
- Orc Racial with gargoyle
- Unholy blight finishes casting (at this point my diseases are up with the most potential damage, and are kept up through out the entire fight, or as long as boss mechanics allow it)
- DPS Rotation

Having both my trinks with 45 ICDs allows for easy re-application if the diseases fall off due to boss mechanics. All you need to help you out is some addon which keeps tracks of trinket internal cool-downs. As far as weapon enchant, it procs often, so it is possible to get all three into another snapshot in case you have to reapply them later on.

For frost, this method is just not happening.

Thanks for this as well. This makes the most sense for Unholy and say for a Lock and Bane of Doom. With that in mind, I wanted to clarify. If you had 100% uptime on the boss would your FS keep diseases up never using Death Runes on a FS just the normal Blood/Frost when they return back from a SS, or do you sometimes have to waste DR to keep those bad boys going? Just wondering if its really possible or worthwhile to keep that original snapshot going the whole fight with FS and never using another Outbreak?

Thanks, I wasn't sure if the pet was considered a "guardian", this clears things up for me on importance. The Garg is also a Guardian I imagine?

Thanks for this as well. This makes the most sense for Unholy and say for a Lock and Bane of Doom. With that in mind, I wanted to clarify. If you had 100% uptime on the boss would your FS keep diseases up never using Death Runes on a FS just the normal Blood/Frost when they return back from a SS, or do you sometimes have to waste DR to keep those bad boys going? Just wondering if its really possible or worthwhile to keep that original snapshot going the whole fight with FS and never using another Outbreak?

I sometimes, maybe twice in a 6 min fight waste two DRs to keep them up and yes it is worth it, else I lose the prepot and orc racial on it. The upcoming changes to unholy will make it much easier to take snapshots. It's the difference on ranking #1 on WoLs or coming in 5th.

Because it's clunky and penalize OB spam at some point during the fight.
HB does "shitty" dmg as 2H frost, wasting a rune and another global CD on it is simply not welcome at all if u can avoid it. 2 GCD vs none (or one depends on situation) for UB, you do the math.
I don't see how it's a dps increase used poorly considering my above two points, enlighten me .

Because unholy blight is a free disease application roughly every 80 seconds, whereas plague leech grants a death rune every 25 seconds? I don't understand why you're comparing abilities straight up without even considering the cooldowns, please enlighten me.

If you're able to use it with a freezing frog proc or outbreak it's a DPS increase. With the 25s cooldown, you're not likely to be wasting a rune to refresh blood plague instead of using an obliterate. Are you really going to tell me you won't be able to make use of at least two freezing fogs OR an outbreak and freezing fog in the span of 80 seconds for unholy blight to be better?

I also don't understand why you're using GCDs as an argument. I'm not in full BiS but I'm not even close to being GCD capped. GCDs are a non-issue as 2H frost.

Yeah so keep a rime, keep outbreak just because you want to use PL ? If not delay everything for it ?
Target switching is harder as 2H frost, PL makes it harder from my pov.

Yes, frost RNG is shit.
Yes, waiting 5+ sec with a proc up doing nothing is not a dps increase.
Yes, sometimes killings adds/bursting is more important than doing a proper rotation and "wait".
Yes, if you do it right it's a dps increase, that's cool for theorycrafting ; not in terms of real cleaving fights.